Plasmonic Brownian Ratchets for Directed Transport of Analytes

TL;DR

This paper introduces a plasmonic Brownian ratchet that uses light to direct the movement of nanoparticles efficiently and at low power.

Contribution

The novel contribution is a plasmonic ratchet design that achieves higher transport speeds and lower power than prior optical ratchets.

Findings

Asymmetric gold nanoarrays under continuous-wave illumination enable directed motion of 40–200 nm nanoparticles.

Nanoparticles achieved unidirectional transport at velocities up to 2.4 μm/s with incident intensities below 1 kW/cm².

Plasmonic ratcheting outperforms previous optical ratchets in speed and power efficiency.

Abstract

Plasmonic nanostructures provide strong optical near-fields
for
trapping and manipulating nanosized particles, but converting these
interactions into robust directional transport has remained challenging.
Here we demonstrate a plasmonic Brownian ratchet that rectifies colloidal
diffusion using an asymmetric gold nanoarray under continuous-wave
illumination. Finite-element simulations reveal anisotropic near-field
distributions that bias optical forces, and experiments confirm directed
motion for 40–200 nm nanoparticles of various compositions
(dielectric, semiconducting and metallic). We show that, under periodic
light modulation, nanoparticles undergo unidirectional lateral transport
with velocities up to 2.4 μm/s at incident intensities below
1 kW/cm2. These results establish plasmonic ratcheting
as an efficient route to bias transport of nanosized analytes, achieving
markedly higher speeds and lower operating powers than previous optical
ratchets, and opening opportunities for integration into nanophotonic
and lab-on-chip systems.

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